


Taking Care of Business

by PorcelainLove



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Slice of Life, Smidge of sadness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-10-28 04:11:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20772323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PorcelainLove/pseuds/PorcelainLove
Summary: At Aziraphale's request, Crowley minds the shop for a day.Crowley isn't particularly happy about it.





	Taking Care of Business

“Mind the shop, Crowley.” 

There was a murmur of discontentment as Crowley popped up from underneath the low pedestal he’d been attending to. He’d shortened one of the legs without hesitation no less than an hour prior because old habits were hard to break and he was annoyed… But then he’d realized how much extra work it would cause  _ him _ if the piles of books came crashing down so he’d taken to fixing his little ‘oopsies’. There were… a few more here and there.

“It’s my  _ baby _ and it needs constant supervision.” Crowley mumbled to himself in a poor imitation of Aziraphale’s voice. He could do better but it made him (almost) smile to think about how Aziraphale might actually think he sounded like that. Pfft, Aziraphale. Stupid angel.  _ His _ stupid angel, more like, but an annoying one nonetheless.

“After what happened last time, it needs to be protected.” This time Crowley did hiss, his tongue coming out forked and serpentine like it always did when he was emotional. He didn’t much care that there was a customer in the shop when he did such things, indeed he wished she would turn around so he could do it in front of her.

She was a browser, plain and simple. He knew with one look that she wouldn’t be asking about prices or looking for obscure titles or whatever the  _ real _ bookworms searched for when they happened upon a store as mysterious and grandiose as Aziraphale’s. But from her hair (punkish, with green and red highlights amidst cactus-like spikes - clearly a fan of Christmas) and her black studded boots, and a chained wallet that kept smacking her thigh everytime she moved an iota faster than she should, he knew she would have been one his old coworkers would have liked to get their claws into. 

Crowley could see it plain as day, black as night, easy as… peasy? One look at his forked tongue would interest her, she might even see his snake-eyes in that split-second before it became clearly more than a trick of the evening light. That tongue would linger in her mind, something so permanent but also so enticing. She’d pass it off as a harebrained idea, one that shouldn’t be done. But then she’d have a fight, maybe about her looks, maybe something else. And that body modification place she’d heard about in whispers would sound more and more fun. She’d get it done eventually, to the chagrin of her extremely religious parents who would take that as the last straw and finally boot her from their house. She would spiral into sin and within a year,  _ they _ would have her.

Crowley turned his back towards her and shuffled off to dust some shelves, his irritation towards the bookstore’s owner already fading from boil to simmer. Maybe Aziraphale was rubbing off on him, maybe humanity was, but letting someone ruin themselves (his angel’s thoughts, not his - forked tongues were incredibly nifty) because he was grumpy was unacceptable. His efforts required work and he loved thinking them through, not just passing off some poor man’s version of sin.

Hastur would have gone for it. Unimaginative bugger. Thought he did make a nice candle.

The girl (woman? Child? Ages were hard to figure out these days what with the invention of makeups that weren’t poisonous, let alone the fact that anyone under a few hundred years old still seemed like a child to him) finally left. For Hell’s sake, took her long enough. Some people really took their time these days. And speaking of…

With a twitch of his nose Crowley locked the front door, taking minimal pleasure in the knowledge that in approximately one minute someone would be trying to get in and would be greatly frustrated by the door being locked. It would be most frustrating for them, especially as the sign that Aziraphale posted would be less than helpful with regards to future times of availability. Too bad, so sad.

As for how Crowley knew such things… practice. Centuries of guesswork made him quite good at telling when ‘bad luck’ would be most entertaining to him and his kind. He just had a knack for that sort of thing. Unlike his other half.

Aziraphale. Mr. Goodness himself. Seemed to totter in between Heaven and Hell on most days but Aziraphale still considered himself the good one in their friendship. Partnership. Relationship. There were many words for what they had, but none seemed wholly accurate.

And anyway, Crowley was still bothered. Aziraphale had woken up that morning with the grand idea of finally tracking down some book he’d been after for a while. He’d actually had it in his original shop but that was then and this was now. Had Crowley been around he’d have done his best to save at least some of the books but they’d been arguing and…

So Aziraphale had dashed off to the airport (because ‘not even wings beat first class’) armed with a premonition from a dream (and not with the knowledge of how that first class ticket became available at the last moment and how an error in the system caused every discount to be applied at once for some  _ mysterious reason _ ) and left Crowley to watch over his most prized possession. 

Who knew when his blond ball of goodness would be coming home? Not him, that was certain. But Crowley wasn’t bitter, no, and he’d never admit it if he was.

Wandering through the store he dimmed the lights and brushed a finger across a shelf. With a grimace he did the same to a sconce above him, and then to the bannister of the staircase he finally meandered his way to. It led to an apartment upstairs. And somehow,  _ somehow _ , no matter how many humans with their dead skin cells and unsecured hair came into the store or walked under open windows during windy days, the store remained spotless. Crowley almost wanted to find dust or even a speck of dirt so he could reclaim his under-used nanny garb and amuse both himself and his angel in whatever way either of them pleased. But... nothing, zip, nada..

There was a knock on the door and Crowley pushed his sunglasses further up his nose in sudden glee. He could see a man with a suitcase in tow, out of breath and red-faced, knocking at the door with the clear desire to be heard. Instead, Crowley stuck his arms above his head and wiggled them to and fro, shaking his hips in (poor) time to the non-existent beat of music he was pretending to dance to. He thought he looked rather sensual and slinky, as all snakes as apt to when music is heard. Aziraphale had never really given him a straight answer on the subject, always finding some reason to cough and turn away instead of looking right at Crowley and his frankly amazing sense of rhythm and grace. 

Crowley winded his way through the bookstore, lingering a few times  _ just _ close enough to the entrance to be seen as an entity inside the shop but not close enough to hear the knock-er over the ‘music’. It took around five minutes but the failed patron of the arts eventually gave up and wandered away, kicking a stray rock in frustration. Crowley took pleasure in slightly altering the path of said rock so that instead of landing in the gutter, it scratched the paint of an expensive electric car waiting at the light. 

The car’s owner got out and for a second Crowley almost mistook that shiny mop of white curls for Aziraphale’s. Feeling suddenly guilty, he made the scratch disappear and dragged himself upstairs before he could see the resolution. 

Each slow step up the short staircase brought his depression back with a vengeance. He’d defaulted to irked while in the public’s eye but the loneliness was what was really behind it. It wasn’t as if Aziraphale being away was a huge deal. They’d gone decades, centuries even, without speaking to each other or even seeing each other in the past. But now that the Apocalypse was over (delayed? Crowley was never quite sure, but he was optimistically going with ‘postponed indefinitely’) he thought he’d be able to spend as much time with his angel as possible.

It didn’t take much to make him happy. The previous night they’d both fallen asleep on the couch watching reruns of The Golden Girls. Aziraphale took off Crowley’s sunglasses and let him lie in his lap while he stroked the bridge of his nose. His inner snake loved that best. Somehow Aziraphale just knew what Crowley needed. He was thoughtful like that.

Sometimes Crowley had to contain his inner giddiness at just how much Aziraphale enjoyed Crowley’s way of dealing with customers who wanted to Ask Things.

“Oh, this book?” Crowley had recounted one day, bringing the copy upstairs with him so he could tell the tale proper. “Such a fascinating read although such a sad history. Sad history, you ask? Well the original owner actually found it in a burned-out castle at the turn of the century, thought it was his lucky day.” Crowley shook his head sadly as he remembered how the customer grasped the book tightly to her chest with anticipation. 

“Problem being that the castle had actually been burned down on purpose on account of how the residents all died from the plague. I wonder how you found the book, by the way, it should have been back in storage with all the other tainted ones.” Suddenly wearing gloves, Crowley mimed delicately pulling the book from the customer’s arms with a look of half-fear and half pretend-there-is-no-fear-but-fail. Then he’d offered the customer a spritz of hand sanitizer while continuing to describe horrible atrocities of previous owners while the current customer clearly wanted to escape and never return.

Aziraphale had been close to tears, his cheeks pink and flushed with amusement although he admonished Crowley for appearance’s sake.

Another memory of a customer wanting to flee but being unable to as Crowley described in graphic detail how to save someone’s gangrenous leg. (It wasn’t his fault,  _ she’d _ brought up an old medical textbook!) That story had earned Crowley a warm smile and an angel slipping comfortably into his personal space.

When Crowley reached the landing he kicked off his shoes (not that it made much of a difference because they magically repelled dirt as it was - Aziraphale’s handiwork without a doubt). Crowley turned on the lights from dim to bright as he made his way to the couch and sat down. There was a clear indent in the middle where Aziraphale liked to relax and the arm that Crowley liked to sling his legs over was looking a little lower than its partner on the other end. 

Crowley used Aziraphale’s absence to take over the entire couch. He wiggled his toes out of habit more than necessity and waggled until he felt properly settled. His ass filled the gap in the centre and he huffed unhappily. Aziraphale would never let him take  _ his _ spot, not if he were there. Crowley wouldn’t even risk it. Aziraphale was very picky about his things. When something earned the moniker ‘ _ my _ ’ whatever, it would almost shiver in happiness. Not unlike his plants at the thought of his disapproval. 

One of them actually lived in the corner of the room, basking in the glory of being alone and adored. Aziraphale had rescued it from one of Crowley’s attempts to spur its luster back to finer form and it had shown clear adoration for the angel ever since. It still shivered when Crowley got too near, a fact that made the demon immensely satisfied.

But anyway, the point to this whole  _ mood _ was that Aziraphale wasn’t there and Crowley wasn’t loving that, not in any way. Even the plant he had gifted the angel (gifted being a generous use of the word) was looking a bit withered and miserable. How embarrassing for the both of them.

Whatever. Crowley didn’t  _ need _ him. He did fine on his own for eons before, he’d be fine for eons after. Just because he was in Aziraphale’s apartment, lounging on his couch, and moping about because he missed the feathery little bastard… It didn’t mean anything, he wasn’t lonely. He was just… bored. Yes, that was it. He didn’t need anyone, least of all someone who would drop him for a  _ book _ , of all things.

Deep down Crowley knew he was being pedantic but he refused to let those feelings rise to the surface. They probably would have drowned in the mire of his self-pity if they had.

He also knew how important books were to Aziraphale. Hell, he’d even helped the angel acquire some rare ones before the fire reclaimed them not so long ago.

Crowley hugged himself tighter and felt… small. Smaller than he had in a long time. He was companion-less and he quite certainly Did Not Like It.

Turning inwards, he pressed his face to the back of the couch and tried to see how long he could hold his breath. He got bored after about 10 minutes and gave in to the urge to inhale deeply, breathing in the residual essence of his angel that clung to the seat cushions. It was indescribable and  _ home _ all at once. Instantly Crowley felt soothed although he continued his inward spiral downwards into the empty abyss of his thoughts, not noticing or caring that he was getting smaller and smaller by the moment.

By the time he eventually fell asleep, lights still blazing brightly above him, he was the size of a garter snake and just as fragile. He was also sorrowfully pleased that snakes were unable to cry.

XxX

When Aziraphale returned to his bookshop in the wee hours of the morning cradling the rare volume on reptiles he’d spent far too long haggling over, he was pleased the find the store in one piece. Not that he’d expected different, but it was a welcome thing nonetheless.

Upon making his way upstairs and finding his Crowley curled up in a nest of his own clothing, tongue flicking it and out against the couch, Aziraphale paused in worry. Concern took precedence over finding a proper repository for his new tome and he let it slip from his fingers. He carefully gathered Crowley, coiling the small body around his pale fingers as he pulled his snake loose from wrinkled clothes.

Pushing the extraneous fabrics aside, he settled back into His Spot on the couch and cuddled his snake to his chest. He let Crowley’s head rest against his collarbone for a moment before contorting awkwardly to place a gentle kiss on the top of the scaly head.

“I missed you too, Crowley.” He whispered, no hesitation or doubt in his words although hidden meanings pranced out in the open. “Thank you for taking such good care of our shop.”

The snake nestled back into Aziraphale’s neck with unconscious satisfaction and although the angel knew he might regret his sleeping position in the morning, he willed himself to sleep as well.

The lights shone strong until the morning sun rose, protecting what they could while their masters slept on.

**Author's Note:**

> My first Good Omens fic... be gentle.


End file.
